Immediate operation for ectopia cordis.

Forty-one infants with thoracoabdominal ectopia cordis have been reported to date; 9 of them survived. Among the patients with an omphalocele as the abdominal wall defect, however, only 2 survived. Death in this group of patients occurred almost exclusively as a consequence of either attempted coverage of the heart or secondary to the associated intracardiac lesion. We report here the case of a patient recently treated in whom coverage with a temporary Silastic prosthesis protected the exposed heart from infection and rupture of the sac, thus permitting full cardiac investigation before operation.